Teaching survival analysis to clinical collaborators

Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center 

The most common questions in cancer research relate to disease survival. As cancer biostatisticians, we regularly conduct survival analyses as part of applied projects and have to explain the results to our clinical collaborators. While most oncologists have years of experience reading the results of research studies, often they have not received extensive formal training in biostatistics, and survival analysis in particular. As a result it is common to uncover common misunderstandings about the motivation behind survival analyses, and the interpretation of survival analysis results. In this talk, I will discuss some key considerations for teaching survival analyses to clinical collaborators and will show concrete ways to describe the need for survival analysis and explain and interpret the results.

survival analysis

teaching

oncology

cancer